Top 10 Signs We're Building a Culture of Health

As we looked back on 2014 and considered all the ways in which we Americans made progress toward building a Culture of Health, the list kept growing. We needed to do a bit of trimming.

Part of building a Culture of Health, as we’ve said from the beginning, is “finding the places where the seeds of a Culture of Health are being planted.” So that’s what we looked for. The trouble, happily, is that there were a lot of "places."

Tobacco-free college campuses, for example. Towns and cities like RWJF Culture of Health Prize winner Brownsville, Texas, where bike sharing is taking off, or Berkeley, Calif., home of the first tax on soda in the nation. Big companies like CVS Health, which in September stopped selling tobacco products.

There was a lot to be happy about on a national level, too. There was a notable drop in obesity prevalence among toddlers, for example. And let’s not forget a significant reduction in the rate of the uninsured.

None of this means that we're where we want to be, of course, but let's call it a start.

We invite you to check out the entire Top 10—and do take a moment or two to tell us what you think we left out.